The idea that somehow we should or even somehow could invade Iran — an idea wildly popular among the crazies who learn nothing from history or sad current events – are based on the take that the Iranians are soooo bad.

Nevermind that we heard much the same things from much the same people about Iran’s blood enemy Saddam Hussein with catastrophic results all around. Not content to be soaked in the carnage of Iraq they now want to try again in Iran.

Thomas Edsell, observing the drumbeat for more war, assembles a lot of the nutjob rhetoric for more conflict when we can’t handle the war we’ve got. Creditcreditcredit to him as I turn it upside down. Here are some of the quotes he shares and then I look at them from the other side.

At the September 5 GOP debate in Durham, N.H., Rudy Giuliani declared: “America has to have a clear position. The position should be that Iran is not going to be allowed to go nuclear. Senator McCain put it very well a few months ago. He said it would be very, very dangerous to take military action against Iran, but it would be even more dangerous if Iran were a nuclear power. And I think a president has to make that very clear.”

The world needs to have a clear position. The United States is already nuclear. If a powerful aggressive state like America is armed with nuclear weapons, should that be allowed to stand? Which country is more active militarily beyond its own borders?

In a September 3 blog post, The Weekly Standard’s William Kristol, wrote: “Why are terror training camps in Iran, camps that are directly training terrorists to attack U.S. troops, off limits? After all, if Khameini (to whom the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps reports) has already established the principle of cross-border attacks against accelerators of violence, who are we to disagree with the wisdom of the Supreme Leader?”

Exactly so, Bill. But what country has been involved in more cross-border, international military activity in recent times than the United States? Who has attacked its opponents in country after country? Accelerators of violence? Who is the brake on violence? Bush’s America?

On the same day, American Enterprise Institute fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht wrote in Newsweek that Iran is “a radical revolutionary force determined to sow chaos beyond its borders. Assuming that normal negotiations can bring it around is, therefore, a grave mistake. The mullahs don’t want peace in Iraq–just the opposite. War may come, but not because negotiations break down. The likely trigger is an Iranian provocation.

 Hasn’t Bush’s America sowed violent chaos in Iraq? Who brought the present war to Iraq? Iran? No, the radical Republican George Bush. No normal negotiations with international leaders, the Congress or the American voters have brought him around. The actual trigger is Bush-Cheney-Lieberman provocation.

The Heritage Foundation, in turn, maintains a web site titled “Iran: The Rising Threat” where the non-profit declares that it supports “a policy of aggressive diplomacy and the strongest possible economic sanctions, combined with the willingness to use force if necessary, to stave off Iran’s becoming a nuclear power.”

Again, Iran is not a nuclear power but the United States is a nuclear power. If being a nuclear power is reason to be invaded, should we be watching the borders for the Canadians to come across, emboldened into using force if necessary, to assault our nuclear authority?

During Senate Iraq hearings last week, Senator Joseph Lieberman … contended that “we have evidence that Iran is taking Iraqi extremists to three training camps outside of Tehran, training them in the use of explosives, sophisticated weapons, sending them back into Iraq, where they are responsible for the murder of American soldiers.”

Joe Napolean-complex Lieberman might note, too, that American policy and forces trains in a lot more than three locales others in violence, the use of harsh techniques and tactics and procedures anathema to American liberties. Of course, that’s the Bush administration’s war on the U.S. Constitution we’re talking about but they do it for military purposes against others, too. Far and wide. How’d Emperor Bonaparte end up, by the way?

Proudly, we are no Iran. Let’s keep it that way.